The village was scared, that much Grimmyr could sense. While by now he was used to many of the peoples of Golarion being intimidated by his towering form, this fear had nothing to do with him. It had clearly seeped into the community long before he arrived. The faces of the townsfolk were pale and tired. Their movements were slow and languid, as if a heavy weight pressed down upon them. It even seemed to affect the atmosphere—dark clouds gathered overhead, and the flowers ringing the small stone plinth at the center of the village green were wilted and dying. Grimmyr’s heart ached to see such distress.

Grimmyr ducked under a hanging sign painted with a tankard of ale and opened the door to what he hoped was a tavern or inn. While his people had no such formal meeting spaces in the Fray, he had learned that these businesses were good places to gather information. Inside, he drew the stares of several residents and a pair of individuals who were as armed and armored as himself.

“A fellow mercenary!” shouted the taller of the two, waving over to Grimmyr. Her skin was tanned from long hours in the sun, her blonde hair was cut roughly, and her friendly grin showed more than one missing tooth. “Come to protect the fine people of Northfork from the monsters?” she asked.

“Of course he is, Aliss,” said the other. He was stout and bearded, the long reddish hairs twisted into two neat braids. His eyebrows were less groomed, as if left to cover the missing hair on his head. “Look at the size of ‘im.”

“Monsters?” Grimmyr asked, his voice surprisingly soft.

“Aye,” said the one named Aliss. “Scaly buggers that crawl up out of the well just outside of town from time to time. No one knows what’s drivin’ them into a frenzy, but his holiness Mordruk and me are only gettin’ paid to kill them.” She winked at a scowling Mordruk.

“Only been here about a week,” said Mordruk. “But it’s been getting worse and—” he was cut off by the ringing of a bell outside and shouts of “They’re here!”

With a chuckle, Aliss picked up the longsword leaning against the wall and strode toward the door. “Best hold your breath, new guy,” she said. Mordruk raised the hood of his white cloak and followed without offering an explanation.

Outside, panic gripped the town. From behind closed doors, Grimmyr could hear children crying and furniture being moved to form makeshift barricades. Aliss and Mordruk hurried eastward, alongside farmers armed with pitchforks and shovels, toward the sound of guttural snarls. As Grimmyr passed by the plinth, the sight of the dying flora sent a foreboding chill down his spine.

Grimmyr smelled the creatures before he saw them. It was a terrible, musty odor of sweat and stale air that crept into the nostrils and down the back of the throat. He gagged briefly but pushed through the nausea. Some of the farmers weren’t so fortunate, as they stopped to retch. Aliss and Mordruk had already rounded a corner ahead of him, and as Grimmyr followed, he was taken aback by the number of creatures emerging from the well past the edge of town. Will there be no end to them? he thought. Mordruk uttered a desperate prayer under his breath, and Grimmyr sensed that he and Aliss had not yet faced a force of such size here.

The creatures were reptilian humanoids with mottled gray scaly hides and bony protrusions the length of their spines made more prominent by their hunching posture. Their heads and tails resembled those of cave lizards, and they wore rudimentary hides and wielded simple clubs, if they carried any weapons at all. Each and every one of them exuded that earthy stench. Many wore necklaces of stone chunks on leather cords; Grimmyr found them familiar but couldn’t place why.

The next hour was a grueling struggle against the odds. The townsfolk fought the best they could, holding back the monstrous tide, but it was clear they would eventually be overwhelmed. Aliss cleaved through torsos with her blade, smirking all the while until Grimmyr could see her arms growing weary. Mordruk called down divine magic to keep her and the farmers standing, though even Grimmyr knew such power would not last forever. For his part, Grimmyr waded into the throng of creatures, swinging his flail in wide sweeps and relying on his armor to turn aside claw, tooth, and club. The field became littered with piles of corpses of the creatures… and sadly, more than a few villagers.

A bellow drew everyone’s attention back to the well, where something struggled to emerge. Though this new creature shared some similarities to the ones they had been fighting, its hide was the red of fresh clay and it towered over the others, only a foot or two shorter than Grimmyr. It dragged a stone maul behind as it stomped toward a villager.

Grimmyr protects a villager from a xulgath spinesnapper. Art by Pixoloid Studios.

“No! Face me!” bellowed Grimmyr, knowing a strike from that hammer could crush a skull. That got the creature’s attention, and it came charging toward him. He blocked the first blow with the haft of his own weapon, but the second hit him square in the chest, almost winding him. With a grunt, Grimmyr swung his flail in an upward motion against the creature’s chin, snapping its neck. The maul fell to the ground, and the grass around the weapon’s head began to turn brown almost instantly.

Grimmyr knew what he needed to do next.

He sprinted back into town, toward the village green. With a mighty strike from his flail, he shattered the stone plinth. A small explosion of force sent him stumbling backward. He lost his balance and fell, hitting his head against a tree stump and knocking him out.

When he awoke, Aliss and Mordruk were standing above him. “What did you do, new guy?” Aliss asked.

“The stone. It was calling to them.”

“The fight left ‘em as soon as you smashed it,” Mordruk said. “The townsfolk must have dredged it up out of the well. How did you know?”

Grimmyr smiled weakly, the aches and pains of the battle catching up to him. “Oh, didn’t I tell you? I’m here to keep you all safe.”

Jason Keeley (he/him)
Senior Designer

---

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It was with supreme regret that Ulka concluded the younger Blackjackets were looking at her with admiration. Not a revelation she wanted to have on the battlefield, especially while splattered with ghoul blood. She grimaced and wiped the flecks of crimson sludge off her arm, tinting streaks of her green skin black. The length of her polearm usually kept the mess at bay, but these rotbags were full of more fluids than she was used to, and they tended to burst.

It would take hours of scrubbing to kill any chance of an undead infection, and Lake Encarthan’s waters were probably just as tainted as the battlefield she stood on. Hell on a pike. Where? Where had she gone wrong? The Blackjackets were infamous for their loyalty to Druma and nothing else, and their masters knew the worth of that devotion. High pay, respect and prestige, the best equipment and training, pressed and fitted uniforms made of sturdy cloth, and thick leather boots to ward off the mud. The fashion wasn’t to Ulka’s taste, but she couldn’t complain about the quality. Not even Andoran’s army provided their irregulars with anything close. The skinflints in Druma even managed to keep a decent supply line running, and the Blackjacket’s civilian caravan had done a solid job of handling logistics...

The caravan! Screw the gods sideways, that was it, wasn’t it? She and her regulars just had to barge to the rescue when those shadowy forms had descended upon the civilian caravan. Dammit, dammit, dammit! She just had to look the hero, didn't she? She just had to feel a twinge in her black, shriveled lump of a heart at the thought of families and children getting slaughtered by something they couldn’t even touch! Ulka hated the fact civilians were even out here to begin with, but it was inevitable with mercenary groups this large. The fighters weren’t patriots, you couldn’t convince them to put up with the lonely hardships of a mere soldier.

Why did it have to be shadows? The caravan might not have needed her help against zombies or skeletons. They had a bold few who’d put up a resistance—Ulka made a mental note to circle around to that sullen little dwarven fletcher when this mess was done—but what could knitting needles and laundry lines do against something with no flesh?

Ugh, had she saved someone's husband? A daughter? That wasn’t the kind of devotion she could scare off with her usual tactic of being brutish and blunt. The very last thing she needed was more fresh-faced, bright-eyed whelps deciding they wanted to run along at her heels. From a moral standpoint, they weren’t that much better than the undead they were fighting. War camp hangers-on tended to be the kind of people who would smash in a dying widow’s nose in the rush to loot her family jewel box. But they were still people, and people always made things messy. She’d hear them sing songs around the campfire, watch them toss treats to the dogs, see one dance a little jig with his son. They’d save her the prime cuts of bacon at breakfast, ply her with bottles of Belkzen gin. They’d laugh at her stern grumbles and idle threats. They’d likeher. They’d rush to save her on the battlefield and take an arrow straight to the throat.

Ulka ground her teeth against the back of her tusks. There was still a fight to be won.

She let out a howl that ripped across the battlefield, an undulating cry that an Andoren soldier had likened to a shepherd’s call sung by a wolf. Her scattered soldiers marched up, spears out, to form up around her in the brackish muck.

“These ghouls want flesh?” she yelled. “Rip their damned feet off their damned legs and cram them down their damned throats!” Her soldiers laughed as they charged into the fray, like the rotten rat bastards that they were.

Ulka followed behind them, assessing the situation. Barring reinforcements from the lake, the battle wasn’t likely to last much longer. The Tyrant might have unfathomable horrors at his command, but those weren’t here. These were nothing more than offal Tar-Baphon had thrown at a hapless village to clear out space in his barracks. Her mercenaries and the Blackjackets would obliterate them, along with anything else unfortunate enough to be in the vicinity.

Though perhaps not without casualties. There was a sudden roar from somewhere out on the water, as one of the stilted houses nearby exploded into flames. The shockwave sent the seasoned warriors onto the wrong foot; even Ulka stumbled. A minor error, speaking to their military discipline, yet the dead were not so easily stunned. The ghouls pounced.

Ulka gave a shrill whistle, using her polearm to gesture to the caravan behind her. “Artillery fire! Retreat inland!” she commanded. That had almost certainly been a volley from one of the Tyrant's skeletal warships, not that Ulka could see far enough in this quadruple-damned sunlight to confirm. May Sarenrae find a dead rat in her most holy breakfast. If Ulka ever met the goddess, she'd pluck that sunbird like a pheasant and string her up in the larder.

The ghouls loped into the Blackjacket front lines as the soldiers began to fall back, rusted blades and rotting nails seeking gaps in their targets' armor. A Blackjacket youth stepped wrong in the loose earth, stumbling as the reedy grass caused his boot to slip. Ulka stepped up beside the man—a boy, in truth—and, in a single smooth motion, swung her polearm up in an arc that ripped through the ground. She ran on swift, simple instinct, the kind that must be earned if one wanted to ply the trade of war and live past twenty. It came with enough force to rip the ghoul’s legs clean off its torso.

Ulka cleaves a ghoul in two. Art by Pixoloid Studios

Ulka snorted as the disparate pieces thudded into the ground, baring her teeth and lowering her spear. A quick glance to the side confirmed her fears. The youth wasn’t just looking at her admiringly anymore. His gaze had gone past awe and settled just on the wrong side of devotion.

The orc snarled up at the quintuple-damned sunny sky, where she could only imagine the gods were laughing at her. “I'll hang the lot of you for this,” she mumbled.

Eleanor Ferron (she/her)
Senior Developer

---

Rally your troops and prepare for war alongside Ulka Oathshriek at hellfirecrisis.com! Subscribe to the Pathfinder Rulebook Subscription to be among the first to join the ranks with Pathfinder Battlecry!

Like many of his kind, Grimmyr is unable to return home.

Grimmyr was born to a family of iivlar keepers of Clan Idrun, one of many small nomadic jotunborn communities within the Fray, that sub-planar realm that lies between the mortal Universe and the Ethereal Plane. A place of silver, shifting sands and insubstantial copies of geographic features and animals of the Universe, the Fray has been the realm of jotunborn and their progenitors for millennia. Grimmyr—and indeed all jotunborn—was told since before the time of his weavingday about the responsibility bestowed upon their ancestors by the gods so long ago: to watch over the mortal Universe that they helped create. This stewardship has been passed down throughout the generations, and during times of chaos and strife, jotunborn must venture to the mortal realms to lend their aid.

Grimmyr knew the stories, knew that he might be called upon to redirect a river or replant a forest, but he never expected that it would actually happen. He was happy tending to his family’s colony of iivlars, watching them spin their silk, shepherding them to patches of ethereal grass where they could feast, and gently pushing aside their claws when they got a little too curious. He could see his life’s path stretching before him. He would meet a pretty girl from a passing clan, fall in love, and be joined. They would have a child, and Grimmyr would teach them the ways of iivlar-keeping. Perhaps one day, he would be considered a clan elder and resolve disputes between neighbors and guide the community through the Fray.

But then, a god died.

The cosmic upheaval of Gorum’s death was felt across the entire multiverse, and the Fray was no different. All jotunborn could feel the havoc being wrought in the mortal Universe deep in their souls, like a spiritual itch that needed to be scratched. Grimmyr was out in a field when the ground began to tremble. Something began to tug at his soul, and he instinctively knew that he was being called elsewhere to fulfill his ancestral duty. Time was short, but the insectile iivlars couldn’t be left unguarded, so he quickly shepherded them back to the clan. His mother and father were waiting there for him. He could see in their eyes that they also knew.

The goodbyes were solemn but not despairing. All three of them understood the weight of this obligation, and while a jotunborn leaving the Fray could be gone for weeks or even months, Grimmyr’s parents believed they would see him again soon. His father presented him with a pair of sturdy gauntlets made of molted iivlar shell to keep him safe, and his mother said a brief prayer to Skode, the giant goddess of heroism. Another violent shudder ran through the ground, as if the Fray was impatient for Grimmyr to fulfill the covenant. Grimmyr nodded silently to his parents and gave in to the pull on his soul.

Grimmyr appeared among lush jungle greenery, the most plant life he had ever seen in one place at a time. It was night, so he concentrated on the silk woven through his skin, creating a soft glow by which he could see. As he began to get his bearings, he smelled the smoke. He pushed past broad leaves and enormous flowers to find a fishing village on a river, one of its huts engulfed in flames. Before he could react, an arrow pierced his shoulder. Several brown-skinned elves—presumably residents of this settlement—trained their bows upon him, with one nocking another projectile. He held up his hands in a gesture of supplication, but his enormous size and glowing skin must have confused and frightened them, so they loosed a full volley at him. He barely dodged out of the way, an arrow glancing off his gauntlets as he shielded his face.

Grimmyr, the iconic guardian.
Art by Wayne Reynolds

Grimmyr’s flight brought him closer to the river, where other elven village folk formed a line to move buckets of water from the shore to the burning building. They froze in fear at the sight of him, but that allowed Grimmyr to notice what he first thought was a log slide closer to a villager knee-deep in the river. The mud-brown crocodile suddenly surged forward, but Grimmyr had already pushed the villager to one side, and its jaws clamped down on Grimmyr’s arm instead. Prying the crocodile off him, he hurled it back into the river, where it swam off to find easier prey.

Though they were initially wary of Grimmyr, they didn’t stop him from carrying barrels of water from the river to help put out the fire. Later, a white-haired elven elder tended to his wounds. She spoke a few words of Grimmyr’s language, and through their conversation, he learned where he was: a settlement on the Vanji River in the jungles of the Mwangi Expanse on the world of Golarion. The elder explained how a piece of burning sky fell from above to cause the fire, a piece of something larger plummeting down far to the southwest.

Since then, Grimmyr has been tracking that fallen star, certain that it is the key to what brought him to Golarion. Other fragments of it scattered along its trajectory, causing minor disasters where they landed. After following one such piece to the hideout of a band of river pirates, Grimmyr realized he required more protection than just his gauntlets and pieced together a suit of armor to fit his frame from various sources. Some he purchased, some he scavenged. To defend himself, he added several striking heads to a stone maul, hoping that its intimidating appearance would deter otherwise aggressive foes.

Despite all this, Grimmyr hasn’t forgotten about home. He believes that whatever powers brought him to Golarion will be able to return him once he has dealt with the catastrophe he was sent to correct. Until then, he will continue to protect those that need it, much in the same way he kept his iivlars safe.

Jason Keeley (he/him)
Senior Designer

Rally your troops and prepare for war alongside Grimmyr at hellfirecrisis.com! Subscribe to the Pathfinder Rulebook Subscription to be among the first to join the ranks with Pathfinder Battlecry!

Ulka knew the warmth of family for less than an hour. Her first cries were a wail of grief for her parents, slaughtered alongside the rest of her hold in a brutal raid by rival orcs. The murderers left the orphaned child untouched among the corpses, prey for wolves or the elements to take, chortling and sporting among each other for their cruelty. Empty Hand scouts found the babe not long after, screaming in defiance at the heavens, as if daring the gods themselves to answer for their sins.

The Empty Hand had come to recruit Ulka's people to the banner of their leader, Grask Uldeth. A tiny bundle swaddled in boar skin was not the prize they sought, but they obeyed their orders all the same. Ulka grew up a sullen child in Urgir, troubled and quiet except for outbursts of unprovoked ferocity. Far from considering this inappropriate, the orcs who raised Ulka were impressed by her ferocity, encouraging her to turn her anger into a blade upon the battlefield. Ulka resented them all for this, loathing those who saw her pain as an opportunistic tool. Of course, this bitterness only made her tutors and caretakers prouder.

Ulka does not remember how she fell in with Grask’s second-in-command, Ardax the White-Hair. All she recalls is that Ardax had little interest in her temper or even her prowess in combat. Instead, Ardax would ask her questions she didn't have the answer to or challenge her to seemingly simple games that were far more complex than they first appeared. While this led to quite a few tantrums from young Ulka, she appreciated these mental challenges far more than any other lessons the Empty Hand inflicted on her.

She was eventually adopted and raised by Ardax’s militant enforcers, the Closed Fist. This upbringing focused on developing her martial prowess, with Ardax personally seeing to her instruction in lessons of strategy and leadership. Ulka excelled in all categories, though she could never quite match the older man’s uncanny prescience. Even now, though Ulka scoffs at the thought of fate or prophecy, she wonders if Ardax sought her out because he sensed something about her. For a while, she even dared to believe she had found her place with him, her future.

Perhaps Ulka might have one day commanded her own orc hold. Yet once again, death came to call upon her. Once again, it strode past her without a nod and took everything away from her.

Ulka Oathshriek, the iconic commander.
Art by Wayne Reynolds.

It came on an evening like any other, when Ulka was standing watch. As the moon hung high overhead, she began to feel a nagging doubt in the back of her mind, so she checked on Grask Uldeth to discover the warlord dead. His body was left on his throne, impaled on multiple swords. Guarding was meant to have been a simple task, and yet she had seen nothing, heard nothing. Such supreme failure, even if the assassination had been the result of powerful magic, would lead to only the direst of consequences for her.

Ulka knew her limits. She had no chance of unraveling the truth in her current position, with her current skills and knowledge. Rather than let herself be used as a pawn, to let others make her pain into another tool, she chose to flee Urgir. Ulka would gather allies, finding plenty of orcs and others who were as cast aside and wronged by the world as she was. She would build her power until an opportunity to avenge Grask and reclaim her reputation presented itself.

Mercenary work sustained her. It was plenty, and it was Hell. Together, she and her followers clawed a living from troughs of bloody ground. Despite her stern orders and brutal punishments, her efforts left too many orphans, yowling babes left to lament the world's cruelty just as she had. Ulka refused to let her rage consume her, as the Empty Hand had urged her in her youth, but she felt whatever passed as her soul grew scabs and scars. Her commands became louder, more demanding, more vicious. Her troops gave her the surname Oathshriek for her battle cry, which promised violence to her enemies and even greater violence to her gods should she fall in battle.

Death came to her again, this time laden with rewards. While orcs could face prejudice among the people of the Inner Sea, many were happy to hire orc mercenaries to slay their foes. Ulka proved herself over and over, earning renown with Nirmathi irregulars, Druman Blackjackets, Isgeri border patrols, and even Andoren Eagle Knights. Her victories soon preceded her, presenting new opportunities with prestigious mercenary groups and local militaries alike. Money flowed into her pockets, and bright young soldiers flocked to her flag. She sent them into combat to their deaths, and they cheered her for it.

Gorum's death brought further riches and ruin. Ulka is in high demand, able to pick and choose her jobs as she likes. She knows she could even ride back into Urgir if she wanted, to be welcomed back with open arms. Yet why should she? Nothing different awaits her there, only more bloody battles as Belkzen fights with Tar-Baphon and traitorous holds of orcs. More and more, Ulka knows the only home for her is among the bones and ashes. The fighting blackens her soul, but to lay down her arms would be cowardice. To refuse to fight for the helpless, to let others be slaughtered like her family, would be immoral. And to find peace, to find a home, is impossible. Nowhere in the world escapes the specter of war. Nowhere in the world is far enough to run.

Ulka fights, surviving when others fall, waiting for the day a foe finally strikes true and pierces her heart. She waits for the day she can finally spit her dying breath at Pharasma's feet.

Eleanor Ferron (she/her)
Senior Developer

& Michael Sayre (he/him)

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